EU to limit the validity of its COVID vaccine pass to nine months

The European Union is poised to limit the validity of vaccine recognition in its EU COVID certificate to nine months, its executive says, in a bid to encourage boosters.

The European Commission says in a statement it has adopted “a binding acceptance period of nine months (precisely 270 days) of vaccination certificates for the purposes of intra-EU travel,” to come into force from February 1.

The measure — which needs approval of EU member states to come into effect — comes as the bloc races to get booster jabs into arms under the shadow of the highly infectious Omicron variant.

Several EU countries had already announced go-it-alone measures that would soon consider double-jabbed people no longer “fully vaccinated” unless they also got a booster shot.

Israel was one of the first countries in the world to limit its COVID “Green Pass” to six months following the second dose of the vaccine, if a booster was not received. During the brief period in which fully vaccinated tourists were allowed in, only those within six months of a second or third dose were welcome.